


this bond, don't break it

by jaerie



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alpha Harry, Alpha Nick, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bonding, Cheating, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Famous Harry Styles, Famous Louis Tomlinson, Forced Sex, Harry is used for his knot, Implied Mpreg, Kidnapping, Knotting, M/M, Non-Consensual, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Louis, Sex on Display, Soul Bond, Threats of Violence, kind of but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:35:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22342678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaerie/pseuds/jaerie
Summary: This is his life now -- drugged and put on display, forced to perform for the cameras.  He's learned to shut down, learned to numb his mind.  It is what it is until something out of the ordinary happens.  It's a hint of his past that he may never get back.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 48
Kudos: 343





	this bond, don't break it

Harry closes his eyes and tries to pretend as if it is in ecstasy when in reality it’s anything but. 

He’s knot deep in an omega, trying to ignore the way she writhes under him with over exaggerated moans and dirty talk. Her pussy is warm and wet and tight enough that his knot stays locked inside, but nothing about it feels right. Sure, it feels good around his cock as his balls empty in the way his body was designed, but the release stopped feeling like a relief months ago, since he was brought to this place. 

The tight collar around his neck sends a zip of a shock into his skin, just enough to cause the muscles in his face to twitch, just enough for the cameras, just enough for the audience he can feel behind the one way mirror. 

He’s never actually seen the people on the other side of the reflective glass. A shadow of movement is all that has ever given it away. That and the feeling of being watched that makes the hair on the back of his neck prickle. The cameras aren’t as subtle. They pan and focus audibly, always present to capture every angle. Harry’s not sure which is worse. 

When his knot deflates enough to slide out, he follows the prompts fed to him through the little speaker in his collar. It’s soft and hardly audible and feels like voices in his head on the days that are the most difficult to get through. Days or really just time. Harry never knows what time of day it is anymore. He hasn’t seen even a sliver of sunlight since he woke up confined to these generic white walls. 

Today the voice tells him to use his mouth. It’s always a different voice when he’s in one of the mirror rooms. This voice directs him to lick up every part of himself he’d deposited into the omega. He represses the urge to gag and does as he’s told. The permanent scars marking his skin a constant reminder of what happens when he doesn’t. 

He tastes different now than he used to. Tasting himself on his own free will used to be something that drove him crazy. The traces on a lover’s lips, seductively licking it from their fingers, burying his face in the mix of himself and the strong pheromones of heat. All of it. He couldn’t count the times. It is altered now, a bitter reminder of his sparse diet and drugs that constantly run through his veins. 

He goes at it until the buzzer sounds, a signal that the session is over. The handlers come in and lock the guide poles onto his collar, the ones that keep him an arms distance from them at all times. It was treatment he’d earned for himself before the fight in him had been broken. 

They hose him off with cold water before leading him back to his cell cold and dripping wet. His body shivers in the drafty hall, the cold concrete painful against his bare feet. 

The door locks with a loud click and he dries himself with the small square of a towel he’s allowed to have that hangs on pipe that comes out of the wall and connects to his toilet. He learned the hard way not to use his only blanket to dry off. It’s the only thing he has to even try to keep himself warm. 

His one luxury is the cream he’d begged for when his over-used knot had become raw and chapped, skin splitting painfully without time to recover. He situates himself on his cot in the way that had become ritualistic for him. He drapes the blanket over his shoulders and slouches back, spine curved so he can easily see his crotch. With his loss of body fat and muscle, the position makes it easy to cave in on himself. 

He tents his knees and shuffles his feet back until his heels hit his bottom and spreads his thighs. 

As it is constantly driven into his head, Harry knows his dick is the only thing keeping him alive. He knows what happens to the alphas who can’t get it up, who can’t pop their knot. He’s seen it first hand. No second chances. It’s the only thing they’re worth in this place. 

So Harry takes his time while caring for his prick. 

The cream is cold but smooth, thick as he gathers some from the jar onto his fingers and distributes it between each hand. He starts with a pass from base to tip, trapping it gingerly between his hands as he pulls away from his body. 

After that, his balls are the first to receive his attention. They’re bigger now and always tender. He can feel the weight of them when he gets up in the morning in a way he’d never noticed before coming here. He doesn’t know what they’ve been injecting him with, but he can only imagine with the changes that have taken place. 

They’re smooth and hairless now as well. It films better, they’d told him as they used some type of device on him. It reminded him of laser hair removal but it burned and scabbed before the hair had fallen out. They’d used that method on his body almost everywhere apart from his head. They’d left his long curls alone. 

Gathering more cream with his fingertips, he starts at the base of his dick and works his way up his soft penis. He pulls back his foreskin and massages it into the head and then inches his way back down. It doesn’t make him hard to do this anymore. He doesn’t think he could make himself get hard. Masturbation has lost every bit of appeal after what he’s been through. 

The skin that expands for his knot is always the worst. The drugs force it to pop without the normal and natural stages of arousal that draw blood to the area and makes the skin more elastic. He spends extra time massaging the area with his thumbs. It feels grounding to touch himself there, to be in control of his parts at least when he’s not aroused. Hours must pass each day as he does just that. 

He sleeps only when his body decides it’s ready. He wraps himself in his blanket in a fetal position, one large hand sliding between his legs to cup himself. It’s the only thing he has and he needs to feel it secured while he falls asleep like a toddler who sucks his thumb. 

-

They tie him up today, strap him down over a breeding bench. Harry hates days like these. He knows it won’t be a good day. 

One of the handlers reaches between his legs once he’s immobile and grabs him roughly. He can’t see what they’re doing, but he knows. It’s all happened before. The cockring stretches just enough painfully pop his balls through it as well and then it rests securely at the base of everything. 

It doesn’t take long for his cock to start throbbing, gravity pulling more blood to it while the uncomfortably tight ring holds it in. He grits his teeth past the ache and the pins and needles until it goes numb. By then, he has other things distracting him from the pain. 

He doesn’t get to hear the voices of direction this time. They aren’t aimed at him. At least he’s allowed the luxury of lube this time. He can’t see the objects, but they’re thick and blunt as they push inside his unprepped hole. 

He doesn’t realize what is happening until it happens. The first shock startles him so much that he screams out. It’s quick, but he knows it won’t be the only one. 

The thing searches around inside him and then it’s pressing hard against his prostate. It shocks him again. All of the muscles in his body clench, especially the ring of muscle the object has breached. It makes it seem like he wants it, like he’s clinging to it and begging for more. 

It presses unrelentingly against that spot, already way too much without the jolts of electricity that start coming in regular intervals now. 

He drops his head down as his eyes water, grinding his teeth to get through it. It must not be the right move because his hair is gathered up and his head yanked back. It’s locked into something so it keeps his face exposed, his scalp aching from the pull. 

Tears start leaking from his eyes. He’s not even crying. It’s a reaction from pain. It makes his eyes water. 

They rub the electricity against him until the tip of his dick feels wet. It’s an odd sensation with so much of him feeling numb. He hopes it isn’t piss. He’ll catch a good beating for that, but he can’t really tell. 

It isn’t piss. It’s too thick for that. He knows what’s happening now. He’s been through it all before. His body keeps contracting with each shock, his balls painfully pulling tighter against the ring as more is forcibly milked from his body. It makes him feel like he’s on fire. Maybe he is.

His muscles keep twitching after everything is done. He stumbles on the way down the hall and earns himself a hard slam to the head. He spends the time in his cell feeling dizzy and nauseous. 

-

He’s with another alpha today. A voice has just instructed them to wrestle until one is able to penetrate the other. Harry has played this game before and, with as scrawny as he has become, it’s getting harder to win. Losing means shitting blood at worst and being unable to sit at best. Lube isn’t usually generously supplied for these situations if at all. Apparently some sick fucks want to see it hurt. 

He’s halfway to being pinned, alpha finger already shoved into his ass, when a voice tells them to stop. The other alpha freezes, same as Harry, both waiting for further instruction. 

“Curly, stand up.” 

Harry glances to the other alpha and sees his short cropped hair. Its length doesn’t allow for curls. His own is a mess currently hiding most of his face. It’s well past his shoulders now even after the last time they’d held him down and given it a trim. 

The other alpha releases him and Harry slowly rises on shaky feet. He’s already hard from the rush of drugs administered by his collar when he was deposited into the room. It stands out from his body awkwardly. 

“Turn around.” 

The voice sounds shaky, the accent sharp. It stirs something in his brain that he attributes to whatever cocktail they’d forced into his body. 

He does as the voice commands and turns until he has rotated 180 degrees. His long hair is down in his face and he shakes a bit of it away as it tickles his nose. 

There is silence and Harry can sense the unease of the alpha beside him that matches his own. He fears they missed an instruction that hadn’t been loud enough. 

“Just, uh, the other one. Suck the curly one’s dick.” 

It’s a different voice than the one they’d heard before. Harry can see the outline of a hand on the one way mirror, just a shadow of a blob connected to it. 

The other alpha drops to his knees and takes Harry into his mouth immediately. His body reacts the way it always does and he disconnects his mind while it happens. He’s come to think about it in the same light as taking a piss. It’s a bodily function that has to happen and will whether he wants it to or not. 

His knot pops behind the alpha’s teeth and it hurts as they dig into his skin. It’s more than the alpha can handle, and when he looks down, he sees his own come dribbling out of his nose as he tries to gasp, eyes bloodshot and watery. He watches it as an observer separated from his body. He doesn’t even flinch as the alpha panics and bites down, knot pinched between his molars, canines digging into the base. The hint of blood on the alpha’s upper lip doesn’t even register as his own. 

It stings when they hose him off, spraying him at close range to wash off the blood from his wounds. It feels like a million needles stabbing into his dick from both the stinging water pressure and the icy temperature. It flops helplessly against the assault and Harry clenches his teeth to get through it. They’ll tie his hands back for a week if he tries to cover himself from it. 

It isn’t often that his hair gets properly washed, but today they must decide he needs it. They shackle his wrists and ankles to the chair to keep him in place as it’s the only time the collar is ever removed from around his neck. 

It makes him anxious as soon as it’s off. The cold air that hits his skin for the first time in weeks makes his pulse throb, the woosh of blood deafening in his ears. His neck is raw from the near constant shocks of electricity and needles. He isn’t sure because he’s never been able to look or touch, but it sometimes feels like a permanent line fixed into neck. The collar is always tight and immobile, painful when the poles leading him down the hallways yank too hard. 

It stings when they clean him and burns when the shampoo they use runs down his neck. He’s used to the pain and numbs his mind as it happens and convinces himself the fingers in his hair feel good. He used to love to have his hair played with. 

They scrub him clean with more purpose this time. They clean his bits with a sudsy cloth and slop them up and over his chest. The water is still ice cold, but the lather feels good against his abused skin. 

He figures they worry about infection with the puncture wounds on his dick and tries to enjoy it while it lasts. He’d always taken the feeling of clean skin after a long, hot shower for granted in his previous life, but that’s something he’s forbidden himself from recalling. His time before this place had been a dream, a distant shadow of imagination. 

Yet there was something that was tugging at him from the recesses of his long lost memory. He couldn’t place it, but something had things stirring from underneath the ground where they’d been buried. Something had shaken him and dislodged something small yet significant. 

He is taken to a different room once he is clean and actually toweled dry. It is different than his cell or any of the other rooms filled with cameras. Soft carpet cushions his bare feet and the couch and chairs remind him of a luxury box at the theater. 

His brain stutters to a halt at the memory of velvet rows of seats and glasses of wine and champaign. Those are forbidden memories he has to convince himself doesn’t exist. But the things in front of him expand those snippets that will surely haunt him for days. 

He doesn’t belong in this room. He doesn’t want to be here. 

The collar feels too snug on his neck like it was fastened onto him on the next notch. He knows better than to pull at it. 

A handler attaches a chain to the loop on it, locking the other end to a ring on the wall. The length only lets him reach half the room, but he doesn’t test it. He’s never been in this room yet knows the consequences will be the same. 

“Private viewing. They paid a shit ton of money so you better behave.” 

The voice of his handler was gruff. Harry rarely heard them speak, especially not directly to him. The only language he ever heard was the small voices giving him directions. It felt odd and all he could do was stare back as he stood there awkwardly. The chain was cold where the slack of it rested against the skin of his back, following his spine until it lifted to meet the wall. It weighs down his collar and put an added pressure to his throat which gave the illusion of being choked. 

The handler flicked a needle to remove the air and then approached Harry. He obediently stood still as the man lifted his balls and shoved the needle in just below his scrotum and pushed the plunger. The sharp pain and then burn of the injection made Harry’s eyes water, the only crack in his poker face. He’d received the same shot before so it wasn’t a surprise. It was what they gave him when they shoved him into a room to perform multiple times a day. That happened at least a couple times a week. 

He could already feel the warmth spreading from the injection site. It wouldn’t be long until his prick was hard. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it only took minutes to work. The other injections took longer and sometimes made him feel feverish and dizzy. These had a more local reaction. 

With his arms at his side, he stands in the same spot and stares at the door. He didn’t want to see the brightly coloured furniture that stimulated his thoughts. 

The handler leaves and he waits. Harry no longer had any concept of time so he had no way of knowing how much had passed when the door finally opened. 

The two men that enter aren’t wearing the normal plain black of the handlers. It’s startling to see patterns and colours on the tshirts and jackets. Even the logo on the track pants seems foreign after so long. All of it  _ is _ foreign. All of it is from the fictional world of his dreams. 

Still, he can’t stop staring. Even when the man gasps, he doesn’t tear his eyes away. 

“ _ Harry! _ ” he hears in a breathy exclamation and he still can’t look away. The voices in his head are getting easier to ignore though they don’t often say his name. 

“Harry, what the fuck?” 

His body is wrapped up in a hug as the words are whispered into his neck. He continues to stand with his arms at his sides, hard prick poking against the brightly coloured design of the tshirt covering the man’s stomach. He doesn’t seem to notice. 

The other man is wearing a plaid jacket and it makes Harry’s eyes cross as he stares at the pattern. 

“Everyone thinks you’re dead.” 

It’s that voice again, the one from earlier, and it makes him feel uncomfortable. He finally looks up to the face of the man that isn’t squeezing the breath out of him and sees watery eyes. He hasn’t taken the time to actually look at a face in so long that he isn’t sure how to read the expression. 

He feels the omega holding his body scenting his neck and takes a pull of his own on instinct. It floods his body with nostalgia and makes his dick pulse in a way that feels familiar from another time. He smells like home with a tinge of something out of place. 

“Don’t let on that you know us,” the voice whispers. “They think we just really wanted to fuck you.” 

Harry nods. That wouldn’t be difficult when he  _ doesn’t _ know them. 

But then the omega pulls back and looks up at him with watery eyes and then lets out a wet laugh. That face. It looks so… 

The omega cups Harry’s face in his hands and places a soft, chaste kiss against his lips. Harry must be asleep. 

“Harry, say something. Are you okay?”

Harry watches his lips move, but the sound is muffled like he’s under water. That voice. That sharp accent.  _ Louis _ . 

His prick bumps against him again, and this time, it makes Harry moan. It actually feels good as flashes of his forgotten life flash through him like memories from his nerves. He’d stared into those eyes while he fucked his knot in deep. He’d watched those lips wrap around his cock. 

He moans again and bucks his hips forward while his eyes roll back. He is so hard and the friction of Louis’ shirt is teasing the tip that is now wet and sliding against the smooth screen printed design. 

“What’s wrong with him?” Harry heard another voice ask. 

“I don’t-- Harry, baby… Are you okay?” 

His hips buck forward again and his eyes squeeze shut. He wants to say something. He’d imagined seeing Louis again a million and one times at the beginning. He never imagined it would be like this. Not when he’s drugged up and hard. 

He feels a hand wrap around him and then that voice again. “Okay, I got you baby.” 

“Louis, do you want me to leave you two alone?” 

“No, I think he’s just drugged up. I don’t know what else to do?” 

_ Let me fuck you _ , Harry’s mind screams. It doesn’t travel to his mouth. 

He can place the other voice now. Nick Grimshaw. Louis always hated Nick. He couldn’t think of any reason for them to be in the same place together willingly. 

A hand squeezes his knot and the other strokes him thumb expertly circling the tip and teasing the slit. He had forgotten how good it could feel and he gives in to it. He comes with a loud shout while his body shakes. He opens his eyes in time to see his cock coating Louis’ tshirt with ample amounts of come. Fuck, he comes so much now. Louis seems surprised by this as well 

“Louis,” Harry whispers finally, looking down at him with heavy lids. 

“Harry,” Louis answers, tears finally spilling down his cheeks. “We’ll get you out of here.” 

“Time’s up.” 

One of the handlers is at the door. Louis looks like he doesn’t want to leave. 

“Come on, babe,” Nick takes Louis’ hand and kisses the top of his head as he leads him away. 

Harry can only stare as he watches them go. 

-

Harry’s mind recoils as he shoves his cock into the blonde omega on all fours in front of him. He doesn’t like it. It is an outdated reaction, one from his early days of captivity. It makes his vision blur. It makes him feel dizzy with disgust. 

He grips the omega’s hips that he can tell were once curvy but have lost their shape. He doesn’t know the audience that any of this is for, but he can’t imagine anyone wants to see scrawny, mistreated bodies fucking in this setting. He remembers watching porn and it was never like this. It was fantasy scenes in luxury hotels and rich alpha’s spoiling their sugar babies. Those were the kind of things people usually got off on. 

They weren’t allowed to speak to each other and Harry hadn’t tried for years. Something made him want to ask where this girl had been before she had been brought to this place, before she was reduced to this. 

He doesn’t dare. He knows better. The temptation to rebel and do so sits on the tip of his tongue. It wouldn’t take much to say even one word. It concerns him that he can’t shut his thoughts off as he usually does, as he has since they broke him down. 

“Breed her good,” the voice assaults his ear. Harry doesn’t even know what that means. He’s already fucking her. He already knows they’ll tell him to knot her. He doesn’t know how he could breed her any “gooder”. In reality, he’s sure there’s no actual breeding involved. 

It makes his mind wander to back to Louis’ face. The new haircut, the additional lines around his eyes. So different yet so very much the same. Breeding had been some of his last memories of Louis, though maybe not such a vulgar description of it. 

They’d been trying for a while. Louis’ bondmark had long since healed, the band was doing well, they’d just come out, and they were coming up on a much needed break. The timing couldn’t have been better to start their family and they had given it their all. Louis’ heat had just passed and the lingering horniness wrapped them up in a slow morning fuck. He could still recall Louis’ scent flooding through him as he nosed at their bond mark and bit down on it in a playful show of love. 

He’d left Louis naked and sex lazy to recover from his heat while he went for an early morning jog down by the beach. The house they’d rented had a beautiful view and Harry loved the way the sun glittered on the water. 

That’s the last thing Harry really remembers. It’s something he can’t think about without working himself into a panic and that never ends well if one of the guards sees him in such a state. When he tried to piece everything together at the beginning, pain was always a blinding part of it. Now he doesn’t even attempt to think back. 

He watches his dick disappear into the omega, her slick making his dick look wet and glossy on every withdrawal. It made him want to gag. His scent receptors feel freshly opened and it is all he can do not to wretch all over her. He isn’t sure how he’s going to finish. Maybe he could just pretend to pop his knot. 

He couldn’t do that. They would know. It wasn’t the nature of the drugs to wear off before he came. That only happened after hours and hours of waiting. 

He breathes through his mouth and closes his eyes. Images of Louis start to creep in and he began thrusting harder before he thought too much about it. 

It gets the job done, at least. 

He spends extra time with his dick after, needs to claim more control than usual. 

-

It all starts as echoes bouncing off the concrete walls. It’s such an unusual sound that he sits up on his cot. It starts as voices and grows to sounds of metal on metal, of things that Harry can’t place. It becomes an almost deafening roar against the bare walls, sound shooting down the hallways and forcing Harry to press the heel of his hands to his ears. 

And then, unlike it started, everything cuts off into silence. 

He sits and stares at the bars of his cell and waits for something to happen. He waits to see something, strains to hear. 

Nothing happens. 

Time stretches out and nothing happens. 

His body stays rigid, every inch of him on alert. 

And then, one by one he hears the sound of the cell doors opening. It bounces down the hallways and grows closer, each one sending fear through Harry’s whole body. He’s shaking like a leaf by the time the key is turned in his lock and the door is pulled open. He covers his head and curls up, trying to protect himself from whatever is about to happen. 

But nothing does. 

Something warm covers his body and he shies away from it. He hears a gentle and soothing voice telling him to accept the blanket, but he doesn’t trust it. He doesn’t trust anything. 

There are people swarming around now. Harry can hear the buzz of their concerned and urgent chatter, can smell the anxiety in the air. A hand rests on his shoulder and his instinct is to pull away. They try to get him to sit up and it takes a long time before they’re successful. 

The person in his room -- a beta -- isn’t dressed like one of the handlers. They actually touch him without just yanking him around by his collar. He stops struggling. 

The bring a wheelchair into the room when it’s clear he can’t be coaxed into walking out. It feels too much like a trap. 

He gasps when a man easily lifts him bridal style and gently sets him down in the chair. 

“Jesus. He hardly weighs a thing,” Harry hears him mutter to someone else in the room. 

It’s shock that keeps him seated as they take him out of the building. The strength of the sunlight causes him to cry out, squeezing his eyes shut against the throb he feels from his eyeballs through his head. It’s been years since he’s seen the sun. 

The journey to the hospital is surreal as are the light clothes they give him. He can’t remember the last time he wore clothes and they feel weird against his skin. He itches to take them off again. 

He doesn’t know how to handle any of it so he sits on the hospital bed in silence. They’ve hooked him up to an IV and several monitors and the beeping gets to him in waves. Beeps have never been good. 

They’ve examined him and explained things that Harry can’t comprehend. Language feels hard to master after years of only hearing a choice selection of words and phrases. It makes his brain hurt. 

They keep telling him that everything is going to be okay yet Harry still feels like it’s a trap. 

He’s been sitting upright in the same spot all night when he hears his name and looks up. There is a gentle glow from the light of dawn that he can see through the window of the hospital room and he wonders if he’ll ever be able to judge the passing of time again. It hasn’t felt like night has passed. 

Louis is standing just beyond the curtain that divides the room when he looks up. A hesitant smile twitches on his omega’s face and he doesn’t know how to react. At least he doesn’t flinch when Louis sits down on the edge of the bed and gently takes his hand. 

“Hi,” Louis says, looking down at their joined hands like Harry might turn to dust. Harry isn’t convinced he won’t. “I’m sorry it took so long. Once the FBI got involved there were a lot of hoops to jump through and plans to make.” 

He has tears in his eyes when he looks up. 

“They said you haven’t slept all night,” Louis says softly, “Aren’t you tired?” 

Harry stares back at him. He’s been tired as long as he can remember. He doesn’t remember how to tell if he should sleep. Sleep is never restful. 

“Will you lie down with me?” Louis asks hopefully, “I’ve been up since everything started and I’m exhausted. You don’t have to sleep. I just can’t sleep if I know you’re here alone.” 

Harry nods and watches as Louis toes off his shoes and crawls up onto the bed. Harry moves over for him to have room and doesn’t know what to do until Louis guides his stiff body down. Everything is softer than his cot and he isn’t sure how to sleep in luxury anymore. Louis arranges his arms for him and positions one of the flat pillows beneath his head. 

“I love you so much,” Louis mumbles in the few seconds before he’s out. 

Harry turns his head and watches Louis sleep. His eyelashes are still just as long and curved and his lips look soft and maybe a little red from being bitten. He always did that when he was nervous. His beard is tinted red in the fluorescent lights just as it always has been. 

Once he’s sure Louis is too deep to wake up, he leans in and pulls the collar of Louis’ shirt back with one finger. He can still see the arc of his bond mark though it’s faded away from the last time Harry saw it. He traces a finger over it and watches as Louis’ body shivers in his sleep at his touch. He can’t stop himself from leaning in to scent him. 

It fills his nose and pulls a strange feeling from him. Something’s different. His scent has changed. 

He takes another sniff and lets out a small growl. It’s the hint of another alpha and he isn’t sure how to control the instinct he has to dissolve into a rage. He hasn’t felt something like this in years.

Louis shuffles towards him in sleep and the touch brings him back to himself. At least a little. 

He stares at Louis’ sleeping face until he drifts off to sleep. 

-

They won’t discharge him from the hospital when he asks to go home. He isn’t even sure he has a home anymore, but he’d rather be anywhere else. It still feels like he’s trapped after the smallest taste of freedom touches his tongue. He can finally see the world outside through the window, but it’s still so far away and out of reach. 

Louis comes to visit him but is only allowed to stay during visiting hours now. It’s strange to feel like a different person when his omega is in the room. He still doesn’t talk much, if at all. Louis leads the superficial conversations about the weather and Harry’s treatments. His body had sent him into shock several times from the withdrawal from all the drugs that had been in his system for so long and Louis has been keeping an eye on every line of his chart since. On some nights as he stares out the window at the city lights and dots in the sky, he thinks it might be better for everyone if they don’t bring him back the next time it happens. He doesn’t know what’s even left of the person whe was before. 

He learns things about his time away in bits and pieces. 

Louis tells him about the morning he never came home. About the running shoe they’d found at the edge of the water, the ripped up Rolling Stones tshirt that had washed up a week later, the safety pins holding parts of the thin fabric together still in place. 

He hears about the weeks and months of searching and the media attention when the story leaked. Louis told him about the memorial service Louis was reluctant to hold and how frustrated he had been when no one would believe that he still felt Harry alive through their bond even if it had grown weaker. The boys had organized a concert in his memory and he listened while Louis described how painful it had been, how he couldn’t even make it past the first song before they’d escorted him out of the arena. 

Five years was a long time and Harry understood when Louis told him the band had parted ways to continue their own careers. Part of him was glad that they hadn’t continued without him. 

He wakes up from the procedure to remove the line from his neck with Louis in the bed next to him. It stalls the anxiety that churns in his stomach with the weight of the collar removed. He touches the skin of his neck with his fingertips for the first time in years and it makes goosebumps rise on his arms and his hair prickle. 

“They said you can come home tomorrow if you’re up for it,” Louis tells him while the sedatives are wearing off.

“Where’s home?” He asks with his rough voice. He’s not used to talking. 

“Here in LA if you want. Living here has been pretty permanent since…” Louis doesn’t finish his sentence. 

Harry nods. He doesn’t want to talk about it either, but he can understand why Louis’ wouldn’t have left. He wouldn’t have either. He wants to go home, though. He wants some privacy. He’s come to hate all the nurses and doctors who insist on touching him and looking over every inch of his body. Being forced into arousal and watched was something that he was used to. He knew the pulse of the drugs that pushed his blood down to his prick. He knew he could let his body do its thing without having any control over it. It was something he’d learned how to disassociate from. 

His time alone with his soft cock was the only thing he had for so long. Gloved hands touching him there makes his skin crawl and tears prickle in his eyes. He can’t explain that to the shrinks they have visiting him every day. He can’t explain much at all. He just needs that to still be his. 

The few hours that he sleeps a day only happen when he’s been left on his own long enough to sleep how he’d learned to sleep on his cot. They let him wear boxer Louis brought to him and a loose tshirt most of the time, but it wasn’t as easy to gain access. When no one was around, he tucked his hand down his shorts and cupped himself in one large hand. He palms it while his eyes drift shut, never growing hard from this action. He holds it close to protect it for himself, to remind himself that it’s still his. 

-

“Nick’s bringing the car around,” Loui says as he fusses over Harry. He’s wearing real clothes for the first time and they feel odd and uncomfortable on him. His black skinny jeans feel loose on his hips and down his tighs and he wonders if these aren’t really his. The unique fraying at the knees is too familiar for them not to be, though. He feels strange but thankful that Louis has kept his clothes. 

“Nick?” he asks while he lowers himself into the wheelchair. Hospital policy. 

Louis crouches to tie the laces of the brand nes Nike’s he’s brought along for Harry. 

“Grimshaw,” Louis clarifies, “He’s bringing the car around to take us back home. 

“He’s in LA?” Harry inquires, brows knitting together. Nick had always hated LA. “Is he here for me?” 

“Uh,” Louis falters and tugs on the laces that are already securely tied. “Nick moved here about a year ago.” 

“Wow.” 

“Yeah. Um, a lot has happened, H. Docs said we shouldn’t overwhelm you at first, but we’ll get you up to speed once we get home.” 

Nick pulls up in a black Range Rover in a newer model than the one Harry had driven. They help him into the front seat and he closes his eyes to the scenery that flashes by. It all makes him too dizzy. His only car ride in years was the ambulance ride that wasn’t even close the same. 

The house looks just the same as it had. Some of the shrubs had taken on a slightly different shape and some of the flowers were different, but mostly the same. It smelled different when he walked through the door, no longer a mix of him and his bondmates intertwining scents. There was more furniature and it looked more lived in. He could tell Louis didn’t have someone following behind him cleaning up his chaotic messes, but it wasn’t dirty. 

The two left him him to go carry things in from the car. There were flowers and stuffed animals and a few groceries Nick had picked up while they were getting Harry ready to be discharged. 

Harry is exhausted. His fatigue had been getting more difficult to ignore the longer he’s back in the world. The drugs weren’t keeping him in a constant state of arousal which meant his body wasn’t always on alert anymore. He still hadn’t learned to force himself to sleep at night quite yet. 

He wanders towards the bedroom with every intention of sprawling out on the familar bed. He opens the door and then stops. It doesn’t smell right. It doesn’t feel right. Both sides of the bed are unmade. There’s a phone charger plugged into the wall on his side. There’s a pair of glasses folded up on the edge of the table. 

“Oh, there you are. I, uh. I put your stuff in the guest room. I thought you’d maybe want your own space for a while.” 

Harry turns slowly and then nods. It clicks into place then and he’s not sure why he needed Louis’ fumbling words to confirm it. His bedroom smells like Nick. His house smells like Nick. His fucking  _ mate _ smells like Nick. 

He nods and plays it off as behind tired when mutters something about a nap. He is tired, but moreso, he’s been stabbed through the chest with a giant spear. It hurts more than he’d like to admit. 

He waits until the door of the guest room his carefully shut and locked behind him before he lets it settle in his soul. Of course Louis had moved on. He’d been  _ dead _ for five years. He’d moved on. Moved on with Harry’s best friend. 

The silent sob rips through him. He can’t let himself make any sound that might draw attention to his distress. 

He thought about the fading bond mark on Louis’ neck and wondered if they were both waiting for it disappear, if Louis had sought out a professional to have it removed. 

He wasn’t sure what he had thought, but finding out that his bondmate no longer needed him, no longer wanted him, rips his heart out. 

Lodging the chair up against the door knob so no one could easily get in, Harry strips out of the baggy clothes and slips into the unfamiliar sheets. He cups himself and sobs, his thumbs stroking the same line he had back in confinement. It’s the only way he knows how to comfort himself anymore. 

He doesn’t fall asleep. He rarely does. The doorknob rattles as someone attempts to open it several times over a stretch of time. He doesn’t answer when someone knocks at the door either. 

“I told you it was a bad idea.” 

Harry hears the hushed voices mumble on the other side of the door. Picking out soft voices is a survival skill he’d had to pick up. It was easy for him now. 

“We’re all adults here. You don’t need to coddle him.” 

“We’re bonded!” he hears Louis hiss. 

It’s Nick that scoffs in response. “Hardly.” 

It would have been better if they’d never found him. His omega moved on with his life. Harry is just an inconvenience now. 

He only emerges when the house is quiet. It’s three in the morning and knows everyone will be asleep. 

He feels like a ghost as he drags his fingers along the textured paint of the walls. This house is so familiar, yet so many things have changed. There are still a few traces of himself in the space he used to call home. The large painting above the fireplace is still the one he bought in Spain. The coasters -- though cracked and broken -- are still the ones he used to nag Louis about using. Some of the movies on the shelves are still his own, now mixed in with ones he’s never heard of. The TV is different, much larger than the one he remembers and the built in entertainment center they had custom built has been modified to make room for it. 

His favourite glass -- the one he stole from his favourite bar in Japan -- is still on the shelf and he pulls it out. Getting himself his own glass of water is a luxury on its own and he drinks two full glasses before leaving it in the sink. 

He continues to wander from there. The laundry room has updated appliances and his drying rack is folded up and shoved into a closet he peers into. The desk that used to be in Louis’ upstairs office is now shoved into the corner of what used to be his own. He can see some of his own notebooks and supplies stacked in a clear plastic tote in the corner, his whole life compacted into boxes. He wondered if Louis had felt the same way he had when he packed away all of his memories in the storage boxes of his mind. 

There were so many songs and poems written on the lines of those journals. It hurts too much to think about, so he turns and leaves the room. 

He wonders why Louis moved his office. Maybe Nick had turned it into a gym. He wonders what other influences Nick had had on the house. 

The door is closed when he reached it. It is only one door down from the master bedroom so he creeps by and turns the knob slowly so it won’t creak. 

The walls aren’t white. It’s the first thing he notices as he pushes open the door. The flips one of the light switches and his eyes dart to the small pink lamp it turns on. It’s next to a bed. A small bed. It’s unmade with pink and brown bedding, stuffed animals abandoned there next to the pillow. 

The room looks so lived in and Harry wonders if maybe the room belongs to one of Louis’ sisters. He pauses. No, they would be too old for a bed set like this. 

He sits down on the bed and looks around in confusion. There’s a picture in a pink sparkly frame next to the lamp on the bed table. It’s a picture of Louis smiling as he couches down with a small girl with long brown hair and a Princess version of Mickey Mouse ears on her head. They’re in front of Cinderella’s castle and her dress looks like it’s straight out of one of the Disney cartoons. He can’t remember which one it’s from. 

The picture was taken from far enough away that Harry can’t see the little girl’s face in detail apart from her beaming smile. 

There’s another frame peeking out from behind it so Harry reaches over to lift it up and finds him own face staring up at him from behind the glass. 

It’s a picture of Louis and himself taken many years ago. It had been taken at their bonding reception, the one that had been public years after the one they’d had when the deal was actually sealed. Louis is in his lap and his hands are clasped over Louis’ belly. His grin is huge and happy, his dimples on full display here he has his chin hooked over Louis’ shoulder. 

He remembers the moment well, or one of the same kind from that night. It felt like the theme through the evening. That reception had been more of a celebration for something else. It was celebrating the fact that they were finally allowed to start their family. It was finally something they could do. They’d had the same conversation over and over again. They were going to start trying as soon as they could. 

He stares at the picture for a long time as he tries to remember his life as that person. It feels light years away. 

“Hey Haz,” he hears softly from the door and looks up. 

“Did I wake you?” 

“No,” Louis says and then gestures towards the lamp. “Saw the light.” 

Louis comes and sits down on the bed, the mattress dipping with the weight of them both. It wasn’t made for adults. 

“I was going to tell you soon. I didn’t want it all to be too much at once.” 

Louis takes the picture from Harry’s hand and looks at it for a minute. 

“We were so happy that day. Ready to take on the world.” 

“Or ready to take you back to the hotel, more like.” 

Harry couldn’t help it. Imagining how he’d felt, he knew that whole day had been charged with thoughts of finally knotting Louis bare. 

Louis snorts beside him, “Well I don’t tell our daughter that.” 

Harry’s eyes shift to the other framed photo. 

“I found out a couple weeks after....” Louis leans over him and lifts the other photo. “It was that last heat together. You were so sure had happened and you were right.” 

Harry nods. He remembers being sure. In actuality it had just been him being cocky after knotting Louis so many times, but on some level he thinks he knew. 

“That’s Sunny. Short for Sunflower.” 

“Like that song I wrote?” Harry looks up at him. Louis nods. “Where is she?” 

“With your family,” Louis says softly, “They didn’t think it would be a good idea for her to be here when you first came home.” 

Harry nods again. They were probably right. He needs to get his thoughts in order before he meets her. 

“She’s four and she’s always known who you are.” He takes Harry’s hand and holds it over his own thigh. “I should have warned you about Nick. I’m sorry.” 

He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to hear about it. 

“It hasn’t even been a year yet,” Louis continues softly, “He was over a lot when you first went missing and coordinated a lot of the searches and stuff. I wasn’t in a place where I could do it. And then he moved back about a year ago for a job and just stayed here while he was looking for a house.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say. With his own bond mark on Louis’ neck, Harry had never imagined Louis with someone else. It felt selfish to be upset that Louis hadn’t waited for him. They’d all thought him dead and this was only a sliver of his own activities -- forced or not. 

“You always hated him,” is what Harry ends up saying. 

“Yeah, I really did,” Louis says with a small laugh. “I just wanted you to know it wasn’t right away. Everyone started telling me I needed to move on, but it never felt right and then this just… it just happened. Before we saw you at that place… that was the first time we…” 

Louis doesn’t have to finish that sentence. Harry knows what he means. The sexual side of their relationship had been a slow build as well -- when it came to knotting, anyway. He almost gags thinking about what Louis implied, but he hides it well. 

“Right,” Harry looks down as he nods. He doesn’t want to make Louis feel more guilty than he probably already does. 

“I’m so sorry,” Louis nudges Harry’s cheek with his nose and places a kiss along on his jaw. In the next second, their lips are together in a slow and gentle kiss. Harry just wants him close. 

“I shouldn’t,” Louis whispers as their bodies recline. Louis ends up on top of him and their kiss continues, the energy between them fueling Harry’s soul. He’d been separated from his omega for so long. 

“It’s just the bond,” Harry murmurs. He can feel the pull of it as well even though he’s trying to hold it back. Maybe feeding it just a little will help them both. 

He can feel that Louis’ is hard when he straddles Harry’s hips and deepens their kiss. Louis’ hands feel like silk against his cheeks and his hips are just as full as he remembers them being. 

“You’re wet,” Harry moans when he catches the scent of it. It’s the only scent he’s been attuned to since they bonded, the only one that doesn’t make him want to gag. 

Louis starts grinding down into his hip and whimpering and he feels the overwhelming urge to take care of is omega, His fingers slide down Louis’ shorts and finds a slick soaked path to his hole. There’s a release of unfamiliar endorphins when he slides two fingers in and Louis’ moans. 

It’s quick after that, Louis’ shuttering above him and then clenching as he comes in his shorts. 

“Let me…” Louis rushes as he slides halfway off and his hand moves between Harry’s legs. He freezes and puts some distance between their faces. “You’re not hard.” 

His hand lingers on Harry’s soft and unresponsive dick and then he’s on the far corner of the child’s bed. 

Louis pulls at his hair in distress. “Oh my god, I shouldn’t have– You weren’t even—” 

Harry doesn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought about himself, just of taking care of Louis. His arousal on an emotional level had overshadowed any physical aspect. He hadn’t even realized. 

“Lou, it’s not like that—” Harry starts to defend himself, but Louis is already rushing out the door, muttering things to himself along the way. Harry sits up and looks down at his crotch. The sparks in his brain had been there, but his body wasn’t on the same page. Or maybe it was. Getting Louis off felt so good, even being so close to him again. 

He blames it on the long hospital stay and lack of sleep. At least the bond hasn’t been completely severed just yet. 

As he heads back towards the guest room, he hopes that Louis reeks of him. A strange satisfaction takes shape as he hopes Nick can smell him when Louis returns to bed. He hopes that if Nick takes a look, that their bondmark will have a hint more colour. Next time Harry will make sure it does. 

-

It’s a song and dance that Harry learns to live with for a few weeks. Mostly, he stays in the guest room that still doesn’t feel like his. It’s small, though, and provides more comfort than the open floor plan and vaulted ceilings in other areas of the house. He’s not used to large spaces and it makes him feel off to be in them for too long. 

Nick goes back to work and Louis does whatever it is that he does. Harry suspects it has something to do with Sunny, but doesn’t press the subject. Louis says they’ve been preparing her as well. 

The story hits the media circuit unexpectedly one afternoon. It’s a rare time that Harry has turned on the television and he wishes that he hadn’t when they run a spot during a commercial break about the developing story. Somewhere in his world of denial, he’d thought the public would never find out about what happened to him. 

Before he’s even had a chance to process it, videos start surfacing from the dark web and each one of them makes Harry sick. There are hundreds out there for anyone to see and he knows that curiosity has everyone searching for them. He starts to read the comments on one uploaded to Porn Hub and loses faith in humanity at what he sees. 

For once, he doesn’t want to be alone with it and slips down the hall and hopes that Louis might still be awake. 

“Nick, stop,” he hears when he reaches the door, “Not when Harry is in the house.” 

“I don’t see why that matters. He barely leaves his room and it’s not like he doesn’t know we’re together now.” 

Harry stays frozen and stares at the grain of the wood, his face inches from the door he had almost just knocked on. 

“It’s weird and I’m just not in the mood for it,” Louis protests. Harry wonders if he’s told Nick about what had happened between them. 

“It’s bullshit, Louis. You were begging for my knot during your heat and wanted to start trying for another kid and now we haven’t even fucked since he showed up. The bond is almost broken, Louis. You said it yourself. You wanted it gone. Can’t do that if you won’t even try.” 

“That was you, Nick. You were the team leader of convincing me I was crazy when I said I could still feel him. You had my family sign me over for mandatory grief councilling and it turns out I was right the whole fucking time.”

“You’ve seen the videos. Hell, you even saw it in person. It’s not like he was holding out for you over there, popping his knot in every hole open for him.” 

Harry isn’t prepared for the sound the follows, a loud slap that he could hear even from where he stood. 

“Fuck you, Nick.” 

Harry turns to head back to his room when the door flies open and Louis full body collides with his. They both nearly topple over, but Harry holds them upright. Slowly gaining his strength back, it feels like a victory. 

“Harry!” Louis gasps and grasps his biceps to steady himself. 

“I don’t want to cause any problems,” Harry forces himself to say when Louis doesn’t make any effort to move apart. “I can find another place to stay.” 

“No, don’t. This is your house too. I want you here.” 

Louis looks up and then starts to lead them both to the guest room. His hand finds Harry’s and links their fingers together. The move feels so natural, just as everything has always felt with them. 

He watches Louis climb up into the bed and tuck himself in like he belongs. He  _ does _ belong. It doesn’t matter what bed Harry is in, Louis will always have a place beside him. When he follows, Louis doesn’t hesitate before he shuffles closer and nuzzles his nose into Harry’s neck. He isn’t even subtle about scenting him, even with another alpha next door. 

“You don’t have to worry about me if you want to… you know… with Nick,” Harry finally offers. He doesn’t want to think about it, but he came back from the dead. It isn’t his place to be upset with his mate for trying to find happiness in someone else. 

A long silence stretches out and Harry thinks Louis isn’t going to answer, isn’t going to acknowledge it was ever said. 

“It hurts when I’m with him,” Louis admits softly. It takes a moment for Harry to realize what he means. “It always has. It throbs and he says it’s all in my head and that eventually the bond would dissipate and I wouldn’t think about it anymore.” 

“I’m sorry,” Harry starts to say before Louis puts his hand over his mouth. 

“Don’t say that. I’m not sorry. It’s just all messed with my head so much.” 

Harry shifts around until he’s on his side with Louis’ back pressed against his front. It’s opposite from their default – Harry’s always been an alpha that loves to be held – but they both need it. 

Harry noses at their bond mark and hates the way it’s tinged with the bitter scent of Nick. He can’t help the way he aggressively scent marks his omega now even if it’s not his place anymore. Louis moans when he does, so he doesn’t stop. 

Their bond has been weakened without any attention to it, but it ran so deep from day one that Harry can still feel the energy from it. He licks the raised scar that isn’t as prominent as he remembers it and holds Louis tighter as he shudders from the long absent attention to it. He lines his teeth up with it and applies gentle pressure, not enough to really do anything. Louis whines and reaches back to grab a fistful of Harry’s hair and he knows it isn’t to pull him away. 

Louis’ slick, he can smell it, and he hopes Nick wasn’t the alpha Louis was getting wet for. It would be so easy and satisfying to sink his teeth in and reclaim Louis the way he wants to. He bites down harder, enough to bruise, and Louis moans and tilts his head to give him more access. 

It’s a surge that overcomes him when Louis whines and calls him alpha. The scent of another alpha on his omega makes him growl and his teeth are sinking in before he can think better of it. He doesn’t want to think better of it. Louis is  _ his _ omega. Nick has no claim when his bond mark has never faded. Louis is  _ his.  _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
